Catch-Up Day

Today in class we caught up on all of our reading because of all the absences last week. I was absent on Friday, but I had already read and took notes on the "Pyramids of Egypt," so I just re-read the chapter and took a few notes that I missed. Some of the notes that I took on the "Pyramids of Egypt" were that Egypt's settlements arose along the Nile river on a narrow strip of land made fertile by the Nile River. Every July, rains and melting snow from the mountains of East Africa caused the Nile river to rise and spill over its banks. When the water recedes from the flooding, it leaves behind a fertile black mud called silt (just like in Mesopotamia). Unlike the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the Nile has a regular clockwork. Egyptians had a good supply of stone, granite, and limestone. Pyramids reflect the strength of Egyptian Civilization. The Old Kingdom of Egypt developed economic strength, the technological means to support massive public works (such as pyramids), and good leadership and government organization. Egyptians were polytheistic, and there most important gods were Re (the sun god) and Osiris (god of the dead), and their most important goddess was Isis who represented an ideal mother/wife. Egyptians believed in the afterlife, and also performed mummification, which is embalming and drying a corpse to prevent it from decaying. Peasants provided most of the labor in Egypt, and in return, they were provided with food and housing during that time. Women in Egypt held many of the same rights as men. Simple pictographs were the earliest form of writing in Egpyt, but the scribes quickly developed a more flexible writing system called hieroglyphics. Egyptians also invented a better writing surface using papyrus reeds. The Egyptians also developed a calendar to help them keep track of the time between floods and to plan their planting season. After that, I had the rest of the time to write my blog.